


Bad With Dates

by Nicxan



Category: The Stanley Parable
Genre: Gen, non-romantic fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:30:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18620671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicxan/pseuds/Nicxan
Summary: After a reset, Stanley is told to stay put in his office by the Narrator, but isn't told why.And as everyone knows, Stanley has the patience of a gnat.





	Bad With Dates

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 4/27, everyone!! \ o wo / What a fun holiday yeehaw

Stanley wasn’t sure, exactly, why he had been told to stay at his desk upon this restart. There were only so many ways he could entertain himself, and those were running dry quickly. Sure, it was fun to see how fast he could click the pen – for about a minute. Trying to climb onto the desk to kick things off for fun resulted in him falling off of the wheely chair, so that was out. He couldn’t even type any commands – that was the point of the stupid story.  
  
He tapped his fingers on the keyboard, mouth pressed into a thin line. The clock in the office didn’t even work, so he couldn’t tell how much time had passed. It was dead silent out there, and that made his hair stand on end. What was taking him so long?  
  
‘ _Narrator?_ ’ Stanley scribbled the note quickly, accidentally getting a few pen marks on his calendar, and held it up towards the ceiling. The lack of an immediately-present Narrator only made his restlessness grow. His leg began to bounce as he wrote the second part of the letter. This time, he waved frantically with one arm while holding up the note.  
  
‘ _Narrator? When can we start?_ ’  
  
The only response he received was more silence.  
  
Stanley huffed to himself and stood up from his chair. Well, if Narrator wasn’t going to give him answers, he would find them. And if the Narrator got upset about it, well, what did he expect? It’s not like he ever followed the Narrator’s story to the letter anyway.  
  
He emerged from his office, quietly shut the door, and began to creep through the office. The carpet muffled his footsteps, light as they were already. Hopefully, he’d be able to slip through the rooms without Narrator noticing.  
  
Nothing seemed out of place. The permanently-locked doors still didn’t open. The décor was the same, though he was pretty sure that plant in the corner was somehow shriveling. The chairs hadn’t been moved from their spots. Nothing was on the walls, sans the non-working clock. Stanley even took a moment to peer into the windows into some of the locked rooms, squinting.  
  
Everything was the same. But where was the Narrator?  
  
Stanley’s body was moving through the halls, but his mind was elsewhere – he didn’t even register how far he had walked. Worry gnawed at him from the inside out, filling his head with the worst case scenarios. Did the Narrator get hurt? Did he leave him behind? Did he fall asleep? No, he never slept, that didn’t make sense.  
  
It didn’t take long for him to get to the two doors. Perhaps he had been walking a bit faster than he thought. (A part of him actually hoped the Narrator had heard him, just to hear his voice and know he was still.) Stanley paused to take a breath. When he opened his eyes, a certain detail caught his attention.  
  
The left door was shut.  
  
Stanley furrowed his brow in confusion. Since when had the Narrator ever shut the left door? He stared at it curiously, just for a moment, then took a few steps towards the right door. The lack of protest from the Narrator almost made his heart sink. ‘ _I’ll find him. Things will be okay. He wouldn’t just abandon his story ..._ ’  
  
He walked through the door, his resolve wavering. Stanley’s movements had become more hurried, far from the sneaky steps he had started with. Maybe if he went to the break room, it would make the Narrator come out and scold him good-naturedly. He always moaned and groaned about that room.  
  
Stanley’s walk to the hallway started uneventfully, but a dim sound in the distance made him pause. Was that … humming? Was that the Narrator humming? Thank God, he was still around! He broke into a run, scrambling to get to where the Narrator had been hiding. Oh, he’d give him a piece of his mind for just vanishing for so long –  
  
“Stanley – Stanley, wait!” Stanley heard the door to the break room shut before he could even get there. Thankfully, he was able to stop his sprint before slamming face-first into the door. “No, no no! You’re not supposed to be here yet! Didn’t I tell you to wait in your office?”  
  
The Narrator let out a huff as Stanley started to write, but Stanley couldn’t really bring himself to care.  
  
‘ _You were gone for so long. I thought something had happened, or that you left._ ’  
  
“If I could leave, we would have by now. You know that.” Bitterness dripped from his words. Yet, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone in a flash. His voice sounded much perkier when he said, “I’ve got a surprise for you, Stanley. Just wait right here. It won’t be long now.”  
  
Stanley gave a thumbs up to the ceiling, and then sat on the carpet.  
  
The humming was much more audible this time. While Stanley could pick out words like ‘and this goes … here’ and ‘no, too tacky’, it didn’t give him much insight on what the Narrator actually had planned. He waited not-so-patiently, chin resting on his hand, bored out of his mind.  
  
When the Narrator finally spoke again, it had definitely been a long time. “Done! Oh, I’m so excited. Why, if this surprise were for me, I would be over the moon!” Stanley rolled his eyes and hauled himself to his feet. “Go on, Stanley. Open the door.”  
  
The sheer giddiness in his tone allowed Stanley to imagine the Narrator almost bouncing in his seat, leaning forwards towards … whatever he talked in. He had to have had a mic, right? Surely. But Stanley pushed the thought aside – curiosity finally won out, and he opened the door eagerly.  
  
The moment he poked his head into the break room, which had been heavily altered, confetti fell from the ceiling onto the top of his head. Somehow, multi-colored balloons rose up from the ground at the same time. At first, he didn’t know where to look. Stanley blinked in confusion, and eventually looked up at the massive, _extremely_ tacky, eye-catching banner that hung from the walls.  
  
‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STANLEY,’ the banner read. Stanley’s eyes wandered down towards the table that had appeared in the middle of the room – on it was a small party hat, a plate, and a two-tier cake. What kind, Stanley couldn’t tell. There was far too much icing on it. (Not that he was going to complain about that.)  
  
The pictures on the wall had been changed, too – it looked like the kind of stock photos he would have found in the real world. Stanley chose to ignore the watermarks on said photos.  
  
Once it sunk in what, exactly, the Narrator had done, Stanley started to shake. He clapped a hand over his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut, desperately trying to hide his hysterical laughter. Judging from the Narrator’s confused ‘huh?’, he had no idea.  
  
The poor man.  
  
“Wh – Stanley, are you crying? Is something the matter? I worked really hard to do this for you, I thought you’d appreciate it. Is it the chocolate? Do you not like --” Stanley waved his arm at the ceiling, still trying to conceal his silent laughter. He managed to fish out a pen; he turned to write on another piece of paper, using the wall as a surface.  
  
‘ _This is really sweet of you, and I like it a lot. But my birthday isn’t today. I’ve been tracking it with the calendar I have hidden in my office. It’s in July. Right now, it’s April._ ’  
  
“Wh … what – I could have sworn I ...” Stanley heard some papers shuffle, and some ‘wobbling’ from what sounded like thicker paper. Immediately after, he heard a small ‘thunk’. He had apparently smacked his forehead on the desk – at least, that was Stanley’s best guess. “I didn’t count things right, did I.” The Narrator’s voice was muffed.  
  
‘ _It’s tricky in here. Don’t worry. :)_ ’ Stanley held up the little addendum, then flipped the sheet around. He continued scribbling. ‘ _But it’s not much of a celebration with one person. Can you come down too? I want to see you in a party hat!_ ’ He couldn’t stop himself from snickering at the mental image, but thankfully the Narrator didn’t seem to notice.  
  
“A party hat? Really, Stanley?” The Narrator let out an exaggerated sigh. “Well, I’ve never been less encouraged to come down, ever, in my entire life. Do you really think I would do something that silly?”  
  
‘ _Yes. You’ve done a lot of silly things. What’s one more_ _harmless_ _silly thing? ;)_ ’  
  
“Wh – how dare you – urgh!” Stanley relished the sputtering. It was a nice, sweet little payback after all the torment the Narrator put him through. “All right, fine. I’ll be down shortly. Try not to move this time, Stanley.”

‘ _No promises. :P See you soon!_ ’  
  
Stanley folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket. It took all of his willpower to sit still in the chair, still as a stone (sans for his swinging legs), but the idea of having an actually fun day in the office with the Narrator was a much better motivator to be well-behaved.  
  
Especially with the knowledge that he’d see the Narrator in a party hat.  
  
He would have all the patience in the world for that.


End file.
